


she's a butterfly (pretty as the crimson sky)

by Dawn_Blossom



Series: Chrom/Grima in Askr [5]
Category: Fire Emblem Heroes
Genre: (not JUST because her father's in love with him although it certainly helps), (so picture her with the fluffy coat), Exalt!Lucina, M/M, future past bad end!Lucina, this Lucina is so down to support Grima
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 01:25:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16075460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawn_Blossom/pseuds/Dawn_Blossom
Summary: Grima meets a Lucina different from the others he has come across.





	she's a butterfly (pretty as the crimson sky)

**Author's Note:**

> Other, well-reasoned people: Lucina rightfully despises Grima and would find it difficult to work with him, but might reluctantly agree to be on the same team if that's what the Order of Heroes really needs
> 
> Me and my Chrima family feelings: Lucina immediately flocks to Grima's side, also where are the adoption papers
> 
> Okay, okay, but hear me out. Okay so if you aren't familiar with the bad ending for The Future Past 3, you gotta either play it or [watch it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDNhZMH-OjM). And then just... Just try to tell me that THAT Lucina wouldn't be happy to see a hero called Grima, that she wouldn't want to talk with him and fight next to him and just generally get to know the person she saw briefly but didn't know how to save. I won't believe you.
> 
> Anyway... The title here is from [She's a Butterfly by Martina McBride](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKSbNgS5jCY). It fits Lucina so perfectly that I could cry.
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy the fic! (Now that Lucina's here, all I have to do is write in Morgan and I can start writing family fluff set in this universe so... I, personally, am excited for that opportunity ^^)

She approaches Grima hesitantly, and already this sets her apart from every other Lucina he has met.

“Is it true what they say?” are the first words out of her mouth. “You call yourself Grima?”

The first Lucina he came across attacked him instinctively on sight. The second refused to speak to him. The third threatened him. The fourth took one look at him and Chrom and decided to go back home immediately. 

This is the only time he has been met with a question. And a strangely hopeful one, at that.

“Yes,” Grima says, narrowing his eyes as Lucina actually _smiles._

“So you were able to be set free after all,” she says, sounding relieved. “I knew it couldn’t be impossible…”

“You have just been summoned,” Grima comments. The newly summoned always ramble this way, completely nonsensical to anyone who has not experienced the same events. “Are you sure it is I you are looking for? I am the fell dragon, not…”

Not anyone that Lucina should be smiling at, certainly.

“I know who you are,” Lucina interrupts. “You may be the fell dragon, but you are the good part of him.”

Grima snorts. The statement is so unbearably naive. How someone whose innocence was broken so young can still stand to say such idealistic things is beyond him.

“Who did I kill in your world?” he asks. “Your father, of course. Your mother, too? Your—”

“Everyone,” Lucina snaps. “Everyone I ever loved. When I sealed you away, there was no one left to care about the victory. I took up the position of Exalt alone, practically a stranger to the few people who survived you. Believe me, I am not ignorant when I call you good. Do you know how I can tell?”

“You desire to tell me,” Grima says, crossing his arms. “Speak, then.”

Lucina smiles again.

“The evil I fought against would have tried to silence me.”

She says it like she’s just claimed another sound victory. Grima rolls his eyes. She reminds him of her father, the only other being Grima can imagine saying something like that so sincerely.

Even so… Grima cannot think of a counter argument. He has no way of knowing what he may have been like in Lucina’s world save for what she tells him. He is in no position to say that he does not seem good to her now.

Still, if he _does_ seem good, her world must truly be one of the harshest ones.

“You know… In the end, you stopped yourself,” Lucina continues, intensely gazing at him. “It was only just long enough for me to seal you away, but it was enough.”

“Hmm…” Grima responds. He cannot deny that the idea is… relieving. He is not sure that he will not someday lose control of himself; that the millennia of rage in his soul will burst out of his human body no matter what he desires. But if he can stop himself should that time come…

Of course, it seems that he only stopped himself when there was nothing else left. Nothing except Lucina…

“Your eyes are like your father’s,” he mutters, turning away to walk down the hall.

Lucina makes a confused noise. The conversation’s end was abrupt, but Grima no longer feels like discussing the alternative possibilities of his own being.

As soon as he walks into his room, Chrom is already moving to his side.

“You’re back,” he says, happiness lighting his almost-unique eyes.

Grima walks straight into his arms. This is the only life he wants to think about.

* * *

Lucina comes again later that week, and this time Grima is not alone. Chrom is with him, outside, where they can feel the sun and breathe the air as they work. It is a quiet area where heroes do not train, and so he did not anticipate her arrival.

“Father… Grima…” she greets politely. “Er… Kiran told me you might be out here.”

“Ah. Do you need us for something?” Chrom asks. 

“Not officially,” Lucina says. “What I had in mind is purely informal. Er, that is… If it would not be a burden, I hoped I might sit with you?”

Chrom glances at Grima. Chrom would never feel burdened by his daughter. The question is for Grima.

“You can stay,” he says. In truth, he is curious at the fact she wants to. 

Chrom moves to allow Lucina to sit beside him, and this has the effect of bringing him right into Grima’s reach. Slowly, Grima places a hand on his arm, feeling suddenly an overpowering urge to claim possession. He meets Lucina’s gaze as he does so, daring her to demand a share. But she either does not notice, does not understand, or does not care.

“What are the two of you reading?” Lucina asks, leaning forward. Her gaze betrays nothing but genuine interest.

Grima releases Chrom for just long enough to grab his previously discarded book, though there is no real point in showing it to her; its cover is nondescript and uninteresting.

“A study of Múspell’s geography,” he says.

“... Practical,” Lucina says, nodding.

‘“Grima thinks we may be able to use their own fires against them,” Chrom explains.

Lucina nods again, but Grima notices the way her fingers tighten around her book.

“Do you doubt it will work?” he asks.

“Not at all,” Lucina responds, tilting her head slightly. “It just seems… Predictable from you.”

“Predictable,” Grima repeats flatly. Certainly, the strategy is not a particularly obscure one. But it should not matter whether it is predicted or not; if the Order of Heroes approaches from the right position, the enemy will have no choice but to scatter.

“No… I phrased it poorly,” Lucina says. “What I mean is that it is… familiar to me.”

“Ah.” Grima quickly comprehends. 

There is not much he can say, however. He cannot apologize when he feels no remorse for the loss of lives he cares nothing for. Even so, something twinges inside him when he regards Lucina’s pensive face. Perhaps it makes sense; if he yearns so much for Chrom, perhaps he must also be bound to his heirs.

“You ought to attend our strategy meetings,” he says, shrugging his shoulders back in an affectation of nonchalance. “You clearly have more tactical experience than some of those so-called tacticians who come.”

Lucina’s gaze turns confused.

“I am no strategist,” she says.

“You are a survivalist,” Grima says. “That is mastery enough.”

Grima quickly turns to his book, flipping it open to the last page he remembers looking at. That is all she is going to get out of him. He is impressed that she out-survived his reign and he can let her know that much, if she cares at all for the opinion of the villain she already bested. 

“In that case, if your invitation is genuine…” Lucina says. “I think I will join your next conference. No one has asked much of me yet given that I have arrived so recently, but I would like to start pulling my weight in this world.”

“You’ll be more than welcomed,” Chrom says. Pride and sadness always come sooner or later whenever he talks to any version of his daughter, and this time is no exception. “Most heroes are summoned here in the middle of their wars. You have already put an end to yours.”

“The effects of it have yet to fade, though,” Lucina says. “I… I do not think they will ever fade completely. Ylisse will never be…” She cuts herself off with a choke. “Oh, Father…”

“You saved the entire world, Lucina,” Chrom says, placing a hand on her shoulder. “No one could ask for anything more.”

Grima continues to keep his gaze down. He wishes that they were not so miserable because of him. But there is nothing he can say now. His bitter words would not soothe their bitter feelings.

Slowly, he begins to trail his finger across a page of his book, tracing a path on the map it displays.

“Tell me what you think of this plan,” he says suddenly, drawing the gazes of his companions once again.

They engage with him when he speaks, and that is all that he desires.

* * *

Grima is not surprised when Lucina adds herself to Chrom’s team in the next battle. The greatest benefit of attending the tacticians’ meetings is that you can place yourself wherever you like, and Grima would know.

“You aren’t opposed, are you?” she asks him. His name is, after all, directly below Chrom’s, attached to it with a line and an “S” indicating that their bond is as strong as the army will recognize.

“No,” he says. “Your father will worry if you’re hurt in front of him, and I trust you would feel the same if he were injured. A lesser tactician might assume that you would be liabilities to each other… But that implies that I would ever _let_ either of you come to that much harm.”

“And as you protect us, we in turn protect each other and you,” Lucina says. “Our strength will lie in unity. Trying to fight alone only makes you more vulnerable. It is a lesson I learned too late…”

“I… also learned it too late,” Grima mutters. Something burns in his throat. It is not his fault that it was so hard to find goodness among humanity. It is not as though he would have chosen to be alone for so long if it has not seemed to be the better option. “You are strange to want to work with me now, Lucina. I am the one who tried to destroy you. But today you take me at my word that I will protect you.” 

“Because I believe you,” she says. “I told you before that you are not evil. And… perhaps it is a bit strange, but that is why, aside from my father, there is no one else that I would rather fight next to.”

“What?” Grima understands why she wants to fight beside her father, of course. But there are thousands of people in Askr she ought to prefer to Grima. The friends she lost, or, if that is too painful, perhaps Marth, Tiki, and all those other historical heroes she must know of.

“Grima… What I fight for, above all else, is hope…” Lucina says. “And you, the fell dragon’s very heart, are the greatest proof I know that anything can change.”

She looks at him, her face seeming far too sweet for a war veteran’s. She offers him a smile that he does not deserve. Grima’s heart pounds, and, in an instant, before he can think better of it, he finds himself embracing Chrom’s daughter as though she is critical to his remaining upright.

He does not know how to explain himself. He should not be acting like this towards her, as though she has any reason to accept the burden of feelings even he does not understand.

But Lucina makes no attempt to push him away.

“I want to know who you are,” she says softly. “My father thinks the world of you. I want to see the person that he does.”

Grima is suddenly assaulted by his own imagination. The picture is idyllic: he, Chrom, and Lucina together, on the battlefield or off it. They could be happy like this. Lucina would not be unwelcome. She has strength and intelligence, and she radiates the same aura of goodness that Chrom does. He approves of her. She is Chrom’s child. Grima and Chrom are parts of the same whole. And so what is Lucina to him?

What _could_ Lucina be to him?

“Perhaps you will,” he says.

If anyone can find something to care about within him, it is surely the woman who already dares to think that he is good.


End file.
